Introduction to Russian phonology and word structure

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Introduction to Russian phonology and word
structure

• Ch 12 Phonemics, concluded

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Discussion

• 8. The unbearable lightness of phonemes
• Well, actually there has been a lot of work on
  phonological theories. If there is interest and
  expertise, we could talk a bit about the role of
  phonemes in these theories

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Discussion

• 9. This isnt the only possible version of
  Russian phonemics. We could put assimilations and
  reductions in there too
• How are high and deep related here?

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Discussion

• 9. This isnt the only possible version of
  Russian phonemics. We could put assimilations and
  reductions in there too
• How are high and deep related here?
• Note surface vs. deep X high-level vs. low-level

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Discussion

• 10. What is neutralization?

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Discussion

• 10. What is neutralization?
• Neutralization is what happens in an environment
  where only one of a set of variants (such as
  allophones or phonemes) can occur
• Eg voicing is neutralized in final position

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Let me tell you a story

• 11. Here is the story about Polish Lets look at
  the handout together

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Too surfacy?

• 12. Why do you think I feel this way about
  Hamiltons phonemes? Notice that he admits to it
  in the heading on page 100

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More discussion

• 13. It would be nice to have an operational
  definition for a phoneme, but unfortunately
  distribution (which is our best metric) runs into
  problems with homonymy and complementarily
  distributed sounds, and also things like Russian
  ?... Why are there problems with these things and
  what practical measures can we take?

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More discussion, contd.

• Homonymy
• Well, if having a different meaning implies that
  you have different phonemes, we are in trouble
  when we look at homonyms, such as ???? press
  vs. ???? reap and ??? races Gpl vs. ???
  time(s)
• Complementary distribution has to make some
  sense, we have to assume that there is some
  connection among the allophones of a phoneme,
  dont we?
• Finally ? again, we have to be practical

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And more fun with transcription

• 14. Lets do the phonemic transcriptions for pp.
  72-73 together